Principal’s Message

Dear Parents

End of Term 2

I can’t believe how quickly the time seems to go when you work in the Education sector. I am pleased to report that we have had another very successful term at Hillside. It has been such a joy to view both the K1 and the k2 children’s growth in self – confidence as the term progressed. What makes all the difference is our philosophy and commitment of having every child engaged in high-quality play-based inquiry driven program. When we return to school, after the Easter break to commence Term 3 (Tuesday the 18th April is our first day back) the reality is we only have about ten weeks left of the school year……only ten weeks to get so much done – and we have a great deal to fit into these ten weeks, but I do think Term 3 is the most enjoyable term for both the children and staff.

Hillside K2 Leavers’ Ceremony – SAVE THE DATE!!!

One of the highlights of Term 3 is always our K2 Leavers Ceremony. The date set for your child’s K2 class Leavers Ceremony can be found below. Further details regarding this event will follow closer to the date.

Latest Unit Report

The latest Unit of Inquiry report (for both K1 and K2) is now available for parents to access on Gateway. Please log into Gateway https://hs.tg.esf.edu.hk to access your child’s report. If you forgot your password or login name, please use the “forgot password or login name” function. Gateway will send you an email for resetting password shortly.

Once you’ve logged in, on the menu bar at the top left you should see ARR. Click on it then choose ‘ARR Report’.

Select the relevant school year “16/17” and report template “Unit Report – March 2017”. If you have more than one child at the school select the appropriate child then click on “Generate Report”. This will create a PDF file that you can save as a soft copy or print out if you wish.

Parent-Teacher Conference

Parent-Teachers Consultations (PTC) are coming up, you will need to login to your Gateway account to book your appointment. The online sign-up will be available from Monday, 3 April, and will close on the Friday prior to your week of PTCs. Please follow the instructions HERE on how to make a booking.
The appointments are about 10-15 minutes long for each child. If the dates indicated do not work for you, we can try to arrange alternatives. However, please be aware that these are the dates when we have arranged cover for teachers and we would like to keep to them as much as possible. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us on 2540-0066.

K1

Dolphin

Frog

Monkey

Panda

Date

11 May

12 May

9 May

10 May

9 May

10 May

11 May

12 May

K2

Dragon

Gecko

Tiger

Turtle

Date

16 May

17 May

18 May

19 May

16 May

17 May

18 May

19 May

Staffing Update

We will bid farewell to two of our wonderful Hillside team this term. Jan our EA from the Turtle class will be relocating to Canada. She has been such an integral part of the Sheung Wan and Hillside teaching team for many years. She will be sorely missed! Emily will start her own family back in the States, and we wish her all the best in this new chapter in her life
We have secured two new Educational Assistants to replace the ladies. Lanny Ramirez who currently works with the ESF Playgroups will join us to replace Emily in the Gecko class. Joyce Tang has been working in the HK early years setting for the past few years and she will be replacing Jan in the Turtle class. We welcome both ladies to the Hillside family.

K1 Leavers – Withdrawal notice due

If your child is currently in K1 and you have decided that your child will not be continuing at Hillside for K2, it would be appreciated if you could let us know as soon as possible to assist us with our planning. Please submit a completed Withdrawal Notice Form (available HERE) to the kindergarten at least two months prior to your child’s last day of school. The debenture will not be redeemed without the two-month advance notice of withdrawal. It is the parents’ responsibility to confirm with individual kindergartens the receipt of the Withdrawal Notice Form.

If you do have any questions please do not hesitate to contact our Admissions Manager, Jasmine Lau, by phone or by email admissions@hs.esf.org.hk for assistance.

For K2 students who are graduating by the end of June, there is no need to submit the withdrawal notice and the debenture certificate.

Hillside Driveway / Playground resurfacing

The current flooring of our outdoor area is made up of very uneven, cracked and broken concrete. Due to securing Capital funding from ESF this academic year, we have been able to arrange for this work to be carried out over the Easter term break. This work will include having all the cracks, broken concrete etc. filled and repaired and then the entire area will be covered with a lovely blue heavy duty paint material (that will also be strong enough to withstand our buses entering and exiting our playground four times per day).

This is a large and expensive job; however, it will have very positive results in regards to strengthening Health and Safety in the kindergarten, along with being aesthetically beneficial (a nice bright blue colour instead of the current drab grey concrete).

Have a wonderful Term break and I wish you all the best for an enjoyable Easter!